“I needed four years to recover a good sample of N. rex bones because they were in very hard red stone,” paleontologist Josep Quintana at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona, Spain, told LiveScience. “To pull the bones out from the matrix, it was necessary to use some hundreds of liters of acetic acid, a very concentrated vinegar — very hard and patient work! But it was worthwhile, of course.”

The fact that it got so big on Minorca seems to follow the so-called “island rule.” On islands, big animals often get smaller, due to limited food, while small animals often get bigger, due to lack of predators.

“For most of their over 40-million-year history, members of the rabbit family have fit well within the size range exhibited by relatively well-known modern members of the family. Now, discoveries on Minorca have added a giant to the mix, a 25-pound, short-legged rabbit,” said rabbit researcher Mary Dawson at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, who did not take part in this study.

As big as it was, N. rex might have been easy prey today — it lost the ability to hop. The long, springy spine of a typical modern rabbit was lost in N. rex, replaced by a short, stiff spine that would make leaping difficult.

“I think that N. rex would be a rather clumsy rabbit walking — imagine a beaver out of water,” Quintana said.

The giant probably also had poor hearing and vision, with relatively small eye sockets and internal ear parts. Its senses likely deteriorated for the same reason it got so large — it did not have predators to worry about. As such, it probably lacked another key trait often associated with rabbits — long ears. The bunny likely sported relatively small ears for its size.

Based on the rabbit’s curved claws, the researchers suspect the animal was most probably a digger that lived on roots and tubers it unearthed. Its neighbors included bats, large dormice and giant tortoises.

Quintana proposes that this newfound giant might make a good mascot for the island. “I would like to use N. rex to lure students and visitors to Minorca,” he said.

It’s actually the European hare, or brown hare, that holds the impressive credential of being the original Easter Bunny: here.

April 2011: Populations of brown hares are holding up in the Braydon Forest area of North Wiltshire, a survey of landowners by the Wiltshire wildlife trust reveals. Sixty seven per cent of those taking part in the survey reported seeing hares on their land: here.

One of South Africa’s most endangered mammals, the Riverine Rabbit will again receive a helping hand from Lindt Master Chocolatiers when it donates a percentage of sales from their Lindt Gold Easter Bunnies to the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) Riverine Rabbit Programme 2012: here.

From miniature elephants to monster mice, and even Hobbit-sized humans, size changes in island animals are well-known to science. Biologists have long believed that large animals evolving on islands tend to get smaller, while small animals tend to get bigger, a generalization they call “the island rule”: here.

The photos published by Der Spiegel were among several seized by Army investigators looking into the deaths of three unarmed Afghans last year. Five soldiers based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle, have been charged with murder and conspiracy in the case.

Der Spiegel did not return calls seeking comment Monday, and it wasn’t known how the organization obtained copies.

Editions with the photos were on newsstands Monday, a day after Der Spiegel published them digitally.

Officials involved in the courts-martial had issued a strict protective order, seeking to severely limit access to the photographs due to their sensitive nature. Some defense teams had been granted copies but were not allowed to disseminate them.

“Today Der Spiegel published photographs depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army,” the Army said in a statement released by Col. Thomas Collins. “We apologize for the distress these photos cause.”

One of the published photographs shows a key figure in the investigation, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska, grinning as he lifts the head of a corpse by the hair. Der Spiegel identified the body as that of Gul Mudin, whom Morlock was charged with killing on Jan. 15, 2010, in Kandahar Province.

Another photo shows Pvt. 1st Class Andrew Holmes, of Boise, Idaho, holding the head of the same corpse. His lawyer, Daniel Conway, said Sunday that Holmes was ordered “to be in the photo, so he got in the photo. That doesn’t make him a murderer.”

The photo was taken while the platoon leader, Lt. Roman Ligsay, was present, Conway said. Ligsay has asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to testify in the legal proceedings against his troops.

Conway sought copies of the photographs so that he could present them to a ballistics expert, who he argued might be able to tell whether the victim had been struck by the weapon Holmes was carrying. His request was rejected.

“I’m very disappointed that in an American judicial proceeding, I have to get potentially exculpatory evidence from a German newspaper,” Conway said.

A third photo depicts two apparently dead men propped against a small pillar. Der Spiegel said the photo was seized from a member of the platoon, but did not involve the deaths being investigated as war crimes. Soldiers have told investigators that such photos of dead bodies were passed around like trading cards on thumb drives and other digital storage devices.

The killings at issue occurred during patrols in January, February and May 2010. After the first death, one member of the platoon, Spc. Adam Winfield, sent Facebook messages to his parents, telling them his colleagues had slaughtered one civilian, were planning to kill more and warned him to keep quiet about it.

His father notified a staff sergeant at Lewis-McChord, but no action was taken until May, when a witness in a drug investigation in the unit separately reported the deaths. Winfield is accused of participating in the final killing.

Morlock has given extensive statements claiming the murder plot was led by Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs of Billings, Mont.; Gibbs maintains the killings were legitimate.

Morlock told investigators he threw a grenade and Holmes shot Mudin without cause; Holmes says that he fired when Morlock told him to, believing that Morlock had perceived a legitimate threat.

Morlock’s court martial was scheduled for Wednesday. He has agreed to plead guilty to murder, conspiracy and other charges and to testify against his co-defendants in exchange for a maximum sentence of 24 years in prison.

Meanwhile, military judge Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks ruled late last week that Winfield can present evidence at his court martial that he tried to blow the whistle on the violence.

Prosecutors had tried to bar evidence that he sent the messages to his family.

Winfield has given a videotaped statement saying he took part in the final killing because he was afraid other soldiers might kill him if he didn’t.

However, the judge sided with prosecutors on whether to suppress Winfield’s videotaped statement as coerced.

In addition to the five soldiers charged in the deaths, seven soldiers in the platoon were charged with lesser crimes, including assaulting the witness in the drug investigation, drug use, firing on unarmed farmers and stabbing a corpse.

___

Associated Press writers Richard Lardner in Washington, D.C., and Kirsten Grieshaber and Tomislav Skaro in Berlin contributed to this report.

The ‘Kill Team’ Images. US Army Apologizes for Horrific Photos from Afghanistan: here.

Since Wednesday morning 23 January, two young small short-tailed nurse sharks are swimming around in the Artis Aquarium. As the first aquarium anywhere in the world, Artis has succeeded in breeding this shark species, which is rare in aquariums. During the breeding, it was discovered that this shark lays eggs; though it had been thought that short-tailed nurse sharks were ovoviviparous.

Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment by Peter Hallward
(Verso, £16.99)

MICHAL BONCZA reads Peter Hallward’s edge-of-the-seat expose of the shocking history of colonialism, tyranny and rebellion in Haiti.

These days, the mere mention of Haiti brings on an overwhelming sense of dread and foreboding.

It is the most salient and vicious example of meddling US imperialism with its textbook two-faced approach to sovereignty, human rights and democracy driven by xenophobia and deep-seated intolerance.

A friend who spent a long time there working with an international organisation trying to secure an implementation and strict observance of democratic procedures and principles complained frequently about the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest democracy” systematically obstructing any such initiatives on behalf of the local people.

Haiti has literally nothing of value left that might tempt an imperial power except for its people’s indomitable spirit of resistance and rebellion passed down through the generations from L’Ouverture and Dessalines.

The slave rebellion of 1791, with its living heritage, remains the singular most astonishing political accomplishment of the western hemisphere.

Here is a clue. Talleyrand, the most effective European diplomat ever and, during the French Revolution, co-author of The Rights of Man, wrote thus to the US Secretary of State James Madison: “The existence of Negro people in arms, occupying a country it has soiled by the most criminal acts, is a horrible spectacle for all white nations.”

The sophisticated new social and political ideas of European Enlightenment and, paradoxically, the ideals of the French Revolution were put into rigorous practice by black revolutionaries such as the proto-socialist Dessalines.

“We have all (negroes and mulattoes) fought against the whites. The properties we have conquered by the spilling of our blood belong to us all. I intend that they be divided with equity.”

But they weren’t. The nouveau riche, arriviste elite of opportunists had other plans. In October 1806, Dessalines was assassinated.

And so it continued for the next 200 years. The mulatto oligarchy has clung to power by a succession of murderous regimes of which the names of “Papa and Baby Doc” Duvalier became synonymous with crimes against humanity.

The cycle is temporarily broken when the ideals of the slave rebellion are given new impetus by the catalytic adoption in the 1980s of the theology of liberation. Enter the revolutionary and charismatic priest Father Bertrand Aristide.

From March 2011: Exclusive Interview with Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide From His Flight Home to Haiti: here.

The Haitian elections were marked by wholesale fraud, disenfranchisement and gross intervention by Washington and the so-called “world community,” both bent on installing a pliant regime to help suppress the population: here.

Amy Goodman’s weekly column, “Aristide’s Return to Haiti: A Long Night’s Journey Into Day.” READ/PODCAST: here. See also here.

Haiti finds itself with a president-elect with ties to the extreme right — thanks to a concerted effort by foreign powers to continue thwarting the social justice aspirations of the Haitian people: here.

Haiti’s Displaced: Caught Between Greedy Landlords and an Absentee Government. Vince Warren and Laura Raymond, Truthout: “Recently, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) delegation in Haiti visited the Barbancourt II displacement camp in Port-au-Prince. This camp is home to 310 families who lost their homes in the earthquake and have set up tents, tarps and corrugated metal structures with the few possessions they have left on the corner of an industrial company’s property. We talked with camp leaders and other residents who told us that the owner has notified them that they will be evicted in a week. This is the latest in what has been a series of threats; last November, the owner showed up with 24 police with guns drawn”: here.

Deportations to Haiti: Still a Death Sentence. Vince Warren, Carrie Bettinger-Lopez and Sunita Patel, Truthout: “The massive earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, left nearly 300,000 Haitians dead and over 1.2 million more displaced and homeless. Overnight, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere was catapulted into a crisis of unthinkable proportions. Basic sanitation, adequate food, potable water and shelter were absent…. The situation is particularly bad in Haitian detention centers – where deportees are locked up and where cholera has already claimed approximately 60 lives”: here.

“I have a dream” is on the laptop of Tawakkol A. Karman. Karman (32) is a human rights activist and member of the conservative opposition party Islag. After the start of the revolution in Yemen, she has turned increasingly into one of the leaders of the protests against the regime in Yemen. “My dream is that our President Ali Abdullah Saleh quits. He is a criminal, a butcher.”

Every day there are more women demonstrating. Last Friday there were not less than ten thousand in the capital Sanaa. They scream even more loudly than the men that Saleh has got to leave. The bravest women even have a tent on the demonstration grounds. Tawakkol also lives there. Her tent has now become the place where students, tribal leaders and oppositionists meet every day. She placed her children with her ​​mother because she thinks the situation is too dangerous for them.

And not entirely unjustifiedly so. This Friday, the government turned the demonstration shortly before the noon prayer into a massacre. The women were unharmed, but helped as doctors and nurses in the emergency room. To demonstrate as a woman takes courage in this conservative Islamic country. Nadia (19), disguised by her niqab – her veil which covers all- says: “My parents know nothing. When they hear that I’m here, I guess I will have to stay at home forever. ”

One of the first women in the square was Farida (49), she also lives in her tent in between the other demonstrators. “I’ll only leave here when Saleh is also gone, ” she says determinedly.

America’s Saudi air war. A plan to train Saudi air force pilots in Idaho is turning former allies into bitter enemies: here.

Three-months-old Seham was laying in her crib when a missile hit. “A loud bang and the wall fell over her, ” says a heartbroken father Farag at the cemetery of the martyrs Shat Alhanshir near the beach in Tripoli. She was his third child. Two sons survived the crash in the district Tajoura, near an army base.

The little corpse itself is not visible, but around the fresh graves thousands are chanting that Gaddafi should hit back U.S. President Barack Obama. After the prayer, three civilians and 23 soldiers are buried. Gunshots are heard. Disapprovingly, clerical worker Salah el Hamroni (43) shakes his head about the violence that affects his country: “You cannot create democracy in this way.”

Michael Lind: “There is no doubt that U.S. participation in the attack on Libya is completely unconstitutional”: here.

VoteVets.org, the largest progressive veterans group in America, is releasing a statement that lays out why the group cannot support military operations in Libya launched by the Obama administration over the weekend. The group’s chair said that there were far too many unanswered questions, and raised concern that operations took place without Congressional approval: here.

US’s most outspoken congressman on issues of war & peace calls for congressional action to defund undeclared Libya war: here.

Robert Naiman, Truthout: “The US is now at war in a third Muslim country, according to the ‘official tally’ (that is, counting Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, but not Pakistan or Yemen, for example.) But Congress has never authorized or debated the US military intervention in Libya. (A sharply disputed claim holds that the Pakistan and Yemen actions are covered by the 2001 authorization of military force, but no one has dared to argue that the 2001 authorization to use military force covers Libya.) Some will no doubt claim that the president is acting in Libya within his authority as commander in chief. But this is an extremely dangerous claim”: here.

The bombs of the U.S. and its allies are never used to save lives or bring justice: here.

The African Union (AU) has urged the United States, France and Britain to “immediately stop” military aggression against Libya: here.

Britain: Stop The War convener Lindsey German declared today that the phalanx of Labour MPs who voted in favour of the Libyan war should be “absolutely ashamed” of themselves; here.

The government refused to rule out deploying British troops to Libya today, claiming a distinction between occupation and intervention: here.